Transcendent 3

In this spectacular anthology, Takács (Transcendent 2) weaves together a beautiful tapestry of worlds where trans people live, love, and thrive. The characters collected within are varied in gender identity and their relationships to their bodies. Some, such as the “mechanicals” in Shweta Narayan’s “World of the Three,” have inorganic bodies. Others, like Finley in K.M. Szpara’s “Small Changes over Long Periods of Time,” are still learning how to live in the bodies they’ve made for themselves. In Ryley Knowles’s “Death You Deserve,” a trans woman’s very real fear of being murdered becomes a ritualized phobia linked to common ways that women die in horror films. S. Qiouyi Lu’s “A Complex Filament of Light” tells the story of a nonbinary grad student who’s studying climate change in Antarctica and pondering the cultural factors behind their sister’s suicide. Each story honors its subjects with uncommon beauty and grace, and the people feel real even as they wreathe themselves in fire or argue with minor deities in hospital waiting rooms. Takács has brought together aching, melancholic, and marvelous speculative stories that speak to the humanity and variety of trans characters. (Nov.)